Month: October 2005

We’re about to leave the hotel and head for Hartford Airport. I hate to see this vacation/honeymoon end because it’s been SO much fun, but ‘Live’ is knocking at our door. Flip has to work tomorrow morning, and I’ll be cleaning the garage and putting up wedding stuff. But we’ve both told ourselves that we’ll be back.

We’re at the Hartford airport waiting for our flight. Since the car needed to be back at 1pm and our flight (SWAirlines 278) leaves at 4:10pm, we have a few hours before we leave. Oh hum.. good thing is we have free wifi

Tonight is our last night in New England, and we’re finding it oftly hard to leave. The weather, people, everything is so awesome … but alas back to Waco for us.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning the B&B inn keepers made us pumpkin and cinnamon pancakes, a baked apple, and sausage for breakfast before we left. The weather up here was CRAZY with the reminents of Wilma, so the entire day was cloudy and rainy. We left Woodstock, Ct and drove up to Bedford, Ma to visit Becky, a friend of Flips, and while there Becky took us to Concord, Ma to see TONS of sites. The coolest thing we visited was the The Old Manse which was the former home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, plus this is where Emerson wrote Nature and Hawthorne wrote Mosses from an Old Manse.

Tuesday night Becky made fish chowder, which was EXCELLENT. That night we left out for Plymouth in the wind and rain, which wasn’t fun. It took a couple of hours to get there, but we made it fine.

Today (Wednesday) we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which was WONDERFUL and headed out to see the sites. We visited Plymouth Rock, which is just a big rock, then walked past the Mayflower II. After visiting a few antique shops we found out about a ghost tour they were giving in Plymouth that night at 7:30pm. Since it was only around 1pm we decided to go driving around Cape Cod and to Warwick to see the TAPS headquarters before then.

On our way up Cape Cod we stopped at Sandwich, Ma, which was really a surprise. We went there just because it had a neat name, but we found a really homey town where they did scarecrow contests at the library and had some awesome restaurants and shops. We ate at a ‘tea room’ and Flip and I both had the best hot tea we’ve ever had plus some great food.

After leaving Sandwich we drove to Warwick, RI, and this was our first visit to the smallest state in the US. I didn’t have an exact address for TAPS, but I read it was in downtown and once that was found TAPS was easy to spot. Well, Warwick was HUGE — and after driving around for over an hour we gave up and headed back to Plymouth. Bummer was we made it back 10 minutes too late for our ghost tour, so this kinda bunked our night. We did walk downtown and ate dinner at a small restaurant (about 45 minutes ago).

Now we’re settling down for our last night in New England, but we vowed to each other that if no kiddos are around by this time next year we might try to come back.

So farwell from New England, and this time tomorrow we’ll be almost to Texas (flight arrives like 9pm CST tomorrow).

Our honeymoon plans have changed, and we’re both REALLY excited about our new destination — New England!!!

Originally we planned on Galveston, but after Katrina and before Rita we decided to change this to New Braunfels due to the influx of folks in the Houston/Galveston area and also we dreaded the 5 hour drive after the wedding. We had a neat cottage picked out behind a historic bed and breakfast, but after Flip’s venture onto some travel sites she found a great deal flying from Austin to Hartford, Ct.

We’ll be leaving early Sunday morning from Austin (flight leaves at 7am) and we’ll return Thursday evening, which gives us 5 days and 4 nights in New England. Our plans for lodging are still up in the air, but I’m looking at the Blackberry River Inn for possibly two nights and then two nights in the Boston area so we can visit friends in that area. I’d love to head down to NYC and visit some friends of mine, but personally I’m not too eager to drive in that traffic.

While up there I’d love to drive to Warwick, RI and if nothing else get a picture of the TAPS headquarters, plus there’s lots of other things we can check out.

The wedding was great, and Flip and I can’t thank everyone who helped out enough for making our special day everything we hoped it would be. After we get the pictures developed I’ll create an online photo gallery to share with everyone, but it might be a week or two — so keep watching! Married life is AWESOME, and as the reverend said it’s great to be married to my best friend

Flip and I left the reception about 6pm, but we didn’t leave for Austin until about 10pm. We arrived at the Red Roof Inn in Austin about 11:45pm, which only allowed about 4 hours of sleep. Four AM came earlier then we’d hoped, but we got to the airport in plenty of time to make our flight. Being one of the first on the plane we grabbed the front seats whiched gave PLENTY of room.

During the flight, which was 2.5 hours to Chicago then 2 hours to Hartford (stayed on plane in Chicago), I pulled out my laptop and connected the GPS. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to check this out, so here’s the picture of us flying over Oklahoma at 568MPH. WAY COOL!

We landed in Hartford, Ct at 1pm EST (one hour ahead of Waco time), grabbed luggage, and headed to the rental car place where I expected to get just a compact car. The lady at Enterprise asked what brought us to New England, and after saying Honeymoon she gave us a NICE Ford Escape for $5 more a day. Can’t beat that!

When driving to the B&B in Woodstock, Ct we drove through TONS of back roads showing New England’s colors. Check out our camera phone gallery for TONS of pictures during the drive.

The room is AWESOME and the inn keepers are great. Last night we had a wood burning fire, drank warm apple cider, and our room has corner windows overlooking the fall foliage.

Well we’re heading out for the day, but check the camera phone gallery often as we’ll be taking pics all day. Also tonight I’ll upload some more pictures from our digital camera for a better view of New England. This is AWESOME!!!

Oh, one more thing — if anyone has digital pictures from the wedding, can I ask that you email a few to sam@totallynerd.com? We have some friends up here who would like to share the pictures with, but we didn’t have any before we left.

Thanks again, and see everyone in about a week

Sam and Flip — in New England!!
For the nerds, we’re at Lat 41º 57.10 N 72º 02.70 W

This morning at breakfast, the inn keepers suggested that we drive up through Massachusetts and see Concord, Gloucester, and Rockport. They said not only does this give us a great sample of New England foliage, but also Cape Ann is an excellent spot to see the Atlantic.

After getting some maps from Tony (the innkeeper), Flip and I set out on our tour of New England. In talking with Becky, a friend of Flip’s who lives in Bedford, Ma, we decided to wait for Concord and anything around Boston for Tuesday and just drive up to Cape Ann instead. The drive took us up some crazy highways (including the Mass Pike), but what’s neat is in New England highways are totally seperate from the city streets (unlike Texas) and there’s no billboards or any advertisements along the highways. I wish Texas would adopt this…

The first city we hit in Cape Ann was Gloucester, which is where the film Perfect Storm was based from. We took TONS of pics here since it was our first time to see the Atlantic Ocean, plus we ate at an awesome restaurant called Gloucester House Restaurant where I got an excellent Salmon and Flip got what we called Fish Spam since it had TONS of different kinds of fish mixed in a casserole. After this we drove to Rockport, Ma and discovered TONS of neat shops near the water.

After leaving Rockport we started our trek back to the Bed and Breakfast, which was about 2 hours drive. We hit the highway going around Boston right at 5:30pm, so we caught all the traffic.

So now, it’s almost 9pm EST, Flip and I are settled into our room with the fire crackling in the background, and we’re reading-up in travel guides to see what to visit tomorrow.

Also check our camera phone gallery often for pics of everyplace we’ve visited. Luckily our phones are working quite well up here

It’s before 8 AM and the car is packed with all of the wedding decorations we have been accumulating for the past 5 months. Who knew time would fly so fast?!? We are meeting Sam’s dad and stepmom for breakfast and from there we will pick up the table and chairs from Action Rental and onto the UU for setting up for tomorrow. This should prove to be a blast of a day!

We can’t say thank you enough for the love, support, and friendship that everyone has offered to us! If you are bored check the web cam page throughout the day to see our progress.

For the last few months we’ve been posting pics from our phones on the Phone Cam Gallery, but I wasn’t going back and adding text or putting images in categories. This morning I finally updated all this, so all the pics should have captions and you can also select categories of photos – like Wedding Stuff, Family and Friends, etc. Have fun exploring

ok folks! We’re down to the wire!!! WHO HOO!!! Today Sam and I stopped by the McLennan County Records building during lunch and picked up our marriage license (picture is in phone cam gallery). The day can’t come soon enough!

Thank you again to everyone for the outpour of love and support! We appreciate EVERYONE in our life!

Two quick thoughts and then I will leave you alone. The first is we send a special sentiment out to Rhonda…we’re thinking about ya girl! The second is a congrats out to Debbie! Her CD will be ready next week so check out her website (link is to the right) for updates.

This last weekend Flip and I had our Bachelor and Bachelorette Parties, and needless to say it was an awesome time for both of us! I’m not sure who all showed-up to Flip’s party, but for mine I had Brian, Blake, Jose, John, David, Robert, and Arthur go along to watch me make a fool out of myself. Let’s just say it’s Monday morning and my chest is still sore from vomitting

Our evening started off with dinner in Austin at Bone Daddy’s, then we hung-out at Dave & Busters for a couple of hours. After that we topped off the evening at XTC where my memory gets abit foggy. I’m the kinda guy who drinks every 6 months if that, so it doesn’t take alot for me to get inebriated. I just hope Dave forgives me. Let’s just say he had to get his car cleaned at Genie the next day.

Click here to checkout the few pics I took on Saturday on our Cell Phone Gallery.

Thanks again to everyone who come out this weekend for both Flip and me. Two more months and we’ll be doing this for Dave!!!